Everything seems to be in ‘a state of crisis’ these days: democracy and the economy, the arts and humanities, how we deal with others and nature and the human condition itself. Things have become so critical that the word ‘crisis’ no longer suffices—we now speak of ‘polycrisis’ and ‘metacrisis,’ signalling both our predicament's severity and our inability to address it properly.

This interdisciplinary volume proposes a more nuanced framing of our current situation through complementary standpoints and disciplinary angles. Political theorists, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, and scholars of religion, film, and literature examine crisis from their unique perspectives. The essays range from Western humanism's crisis and philosophical treatments of crisis to representations in contemporary cinema and literature, exploring how crises manifest in localised contexts like Kuwait and Nigeria alongside global phenomena such as the water crisis.

The collection will be of great interest to academics, researchers, and advanced students of philosophy, political theory, sociology, cultural studies, crisis studies, critical theory, and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding contemporary political thought and modern predicaments. This book was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki: Journal for Theoretical Humanities.